We’re excited to unveil a completely redesigned end-to-end integration with Kaltura. The new integration dramatically simplifies workflow and includes the following new features:

- Ability to upload videos to 3Play Media directly from your Kaltura account

- Captions are automatically sent to Kaltura after they are processed

- Ability to upload up to 100 videos at once

- More flexible searching and sorting options

Read step-by-step instructions to create and publish captions, subtitles, or an interactive transcript for Kaltura.

We’re excited to unveil a completely redesigned end-to-end integration with Brightcove. The new integration dramatically simplifies workflow and includes the following new features:

- Ability to upload videos to 3Play Media directly from your Brightcove account

- Captions are automatically sent to Brightcove after they are processed

- Ability to upload up to 100 videos at once

- More flexible searching and sorting options

Read step-by-step instructions to create and publish captions, subtitles, or an interactive transcript for Brightcove.

Last Thursday, March 15, we were fortunate enough to have two experts from Google and Adobe join us for a webinar to discuss video accessibility. Andrew Kirkpatrick from Adobe Systems and Naomi Black from Google discussed the latest technologies and tools available to web publishers, as well as the impact of HTML5, mobile devices, and upcoming legislative changes impacting access to video.

Unfortunately there was not enough time to address all of the audience questions during the webinar. However, Andrew and Naomi were kind enough to answer many of the questions after the webinar. Below are answers to questions that were not addressed during the webinar.

Watch the webinar

Complete transcript

Slide presentation

Which 3 Languages does YouTube Speech Recognition Support?

[Naomi] Auto-timing and auto-captions are available for videos with audio in English, Japanese, and Korean.

How accessible are the players themselves (the controls, etc.)?

[Naomi] You should be able to get to the video player with a screen reader that supports Flash. If you’re not using a screen reader, you will need to click (or otherwise activate) the player on the page. Once you do this, you can use the keyboard to control the video player. See http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189278 for more detail on both of these.

[Andrew] The accessibility of controls for a Flash-based player will depend on the developer. If the developer follows best practices for Flash accessibility the UI will be keyboard accessible cross-platform and screen reader/magnifier accessible on Windows. Developers might also choose to offer the controls in HTML and use the JavaScript bridge to send commands to the player window, which is a more cross-platform accessible strategy. The developer of a Flash based video player needs to implement support for tabbing between HTML and Flash content. There is a techniques at the W3C which addresses this that you could point developers to: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/FLASH17.html

Does the feature for moving the caption and adjusting caption font work in all browsers or only Chrome?

[Naomi] It works in all desktop browsers that support HTML5 or Adobe Flash (AS3).

Can we use the auto translate feature on YouTube as a way to create caption files that we can use on our own videos or on other services? Is there a way to export the captions?

[Naomi] Yes, the owner of the video can download the captions (including translation, and automatic captions). You can do this on youtube.com under Captions and Subtitles, or by using the YouTube API.

You should show the interactive transcript – that is also a cool new YouTube feature that captions enable.

[Naomi] There’s a support page here that explains how viewers can look at the whole transcript for any captioned video: http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=100078

What if we have created a captioning file (through Quicktime or through a third-party), and that file has all the time coding, etc. Can that file be uploaded into the current YouTube system?

[Naomi] If it’s in a format that YouTube supports, it should just work. Try it! If it doesn’t work, there are some helpful converters available. 3Play Media have a pretty handy one: http://www.3playmedia.com/resources/caption-format-converter/

When is Google going to make captions available to third-party video players (for people who want to embed a YouTube video but don’t own the video)?

[Naomi] If the video has captions, and you embed it in a website, you’ll be able to play it with captions. If the video isn’t captioned, we recommend that you contact the owner of the video and explain the importance of captioning to make their video accessible! There are some other approaches you can look into with the permission of the owner — 3Play Media makes a captions plug-in, for example, that you can use in a web page.

Does YouTube import the SMPTE-TT safe harbour?

[Naomi] Not today, but mainly because we haven’t actually seen any of our partners using it to deliver captions. The same is true of WebVTT. YouTube already support formats like SCC, CAP, and STL, which are commonly used for CEA-608 captions in DVD and broadcast. As long as a format provides captions that are equivalent on playback in YouTube to what consumers see on TV, the CVAA doesn’t mandate any particular choice of format. That said, it’s likely that we’ll add support for more formats in future.

Can you please go back and show/talk about the Beta Audio Transcribe in YouTube? Is that actually creating a caption file? Is that file editable?

[Naomi] Sorry we didn’t have time to get to this. This video provides more information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTvHIDKLFqc The owner of the video can also download the automatic captions and edit them, then upload them to YouTube. The file we provide is just a text file with time information.

When the voice recognition was first implemented across YouTube, it was defaulted to “on”. A few months later this was changed. Folks who are working with the deaf, late-deafened, and hard-of-hearing have found a huge drop in how many people know about and use the YouTube tools because of this. Is there any likelihood that this decision will be reversed?

[Naomi] We’ve since added a checkbox under Settings > Playback Setup that lets you turn automatic captions (and regular captions) on all the time. This means that if you’re logged into YouTube, we’ll remember your preference and always show captions (if we can). We did previously have closed captions “on” by default, but that was only for captions added by the owner, never for anything machine generated. The video owner can also set the captions to always be on — unless the viewer chooses to turn them off.

Will this be a requirement for teachers creating videos of their lessons and posting them online for students?

[Andrew] The CVAA doesn’t cover non-broadcast video. Education content is generally covered by Section 504, which doesn’t necessarily require captioning as the means to delivering access (e.g. you could hire a signing interpreter to follow a deaf or hard of hearing student around and interpret video content as needed and this would meet 504 – obviously not a scalable solution). Captioning makes the most sense in my opinion, for some of the other reasons we cited such as searchability.

Does the legislation apply equally to online content and broadcast content?

[Andrew] For captioning, the CVAA applies to online content which was also broadcast. The CVAA doesn’t apply to web-only videos unless they are comprised of edited broadcast content. However, other rules, such as Section 508 apply to both.

Where can I find more information about the changes in legislation, and know when it will be in effect?

http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/video-programming-accessibility-advisory-committee-vpaac
http://coataccess.org/
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/

Does Captivate allow you to provide captions for .swf files or avatars?

[Andrew] Captivate captioning is for “slides”, so anything within the slides could have captions applied to it. See http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/captivate/ for some additional information.

I have many open-captioned videos on YouTube. Does CVAA require me to add closed captions to those so there is user functionality?

[Andrew] Not until you broadcast the content on television, but then, yes.

Is this SMPTETT-SXSW-Demo example available in the OSMF repository?

[Andrew] No, not yet. I plan to post the demo and source and will indicate when that happens (likely next week) on the AdobeAccess twitter account and blog (http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility)

For Adobe, can you discuss captioning for live Flash streaming? Is there a standard for encoders to extract captioning data from baseband and insert into metadata for display in OSMF or other Flash players?

[Andrew] Live captioning is still an area that we need to do work on. There are issues with regard to a streaming format but there are discussions on the TTML/SMPTE working group which should help clarify requirements.

Is the Open Source Media Framework a tool for media player developers or is it for content/web developers? or both…?

[Andrew] OSMF can be used by anyone, but it is more developer friendly rather than content producer friendly.

Is there an export function from premiere to the SMPTE-TT format OSMF uses? If not where is the 3rd party SDK?

[Andrew] Not at present. MacCaption supports SMPTE-TT export.

Could you discuss late binding audio, please?

[Andrew] http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/osmf.adobe/index.php?title=Late-Binding_Audio has more information.

Is Adobe planning to enhance the ability to export to HTML5 from Flash , Adobe Captivate, etc?

[Andrew] Supporting HTML5 is a very important aspect of a variety of tools. For example: http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2011/09/html5-converter-for-adobe-captivate-5-5-is-here.html

Adobe Captivate – what is the caption format/export?

[Andrew] A custom flat text file. In my experience people rely on the built-in captioning tool.

How much extra bandwith is taken up with customisable captions? Can you produce a plain pack version – we have government guidelines (for govt sites) about this in New Zealand.

[Andrew] The caption data is no larger, the change is in the logic of the tool that renders that data.

Will there be a multi-language caption plugin example in the OSMF repository?

[Andrew] There should be, I’ll check into that.

will the OSMF player replace the FLVPlayback and FLVCaption components in Flash Professional?

[Andrew] I don’t have a firm answer for that question, sorry.

We’re a community college and I feel obligated to caption videos but we don’t have the hand power…and video is an important tool in instruction.

[Andrew] That’s a hard spot to be in. There is work going on to try to make automatic captions more accurate and cheaper, but right now good captions cost time or money.

Has anyone developed a control for using the caption to control the video. For young folks with reading difficulties, the captions often move along a little too quickly. Would be great to click to move the video ahead by each caption. Might, then also, want to control the amount of text in each caption. Thanks.

[Andrew] That’s a great point and I haven’t thought about that. Noted!

Where can I obtain the full specs for the SMPTE-TT file format?

[Andrew] https://store.smpte.org/SearchResults.asp?Search=2052 (free)

Can you embed closed captions for HLS delivery on iOS devices? I know it works for iTunes but what about streaming?

[Andrew] I believe that it is the same process for HLS streaming since the iOS video player looks for and renders the embedded 608 data.

Does google have any plans to offer the speech recognition/transcript sync tools outside of YouTube? It would be helpful for audio files or internal captioning projects.

[Andrew] This functionality is in Adobe Premiere CS 5.5

Do audio descriptions need to be captioned? (Should they be captioned or would that be “noise” for the caption user)?

[Andrew] No, audio descriptions do not need to be captioned. However providing a text version of the captioning and audio description content is useful for users who are deaf and blind.

How about captions for Adobe Connect?

[Andrew] Connect supports real time captioning. Check out the accessibility blog at http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility

This blog article shows you how to quickly add closed captions or multilingual subtitles to your Vimeo videos that are embedded on your site. The process involves submitting your video file to 3Play Media for captioning and/or translation, then publishing the captions or subtitles using the 3Play Media captions plugin. The captions plugin is embedded together with the Vimeo video and you can control the position, style, and other settings. This article also shows how adding captions makes your video searchable and SEO-friendly.

Step 1 – Submit Your Video File for Captioning

Note: Proceed to step 1.3 if you have access to the source video file and don’t need to download it from Vimeo.

1.1 Log into your Vimeo account and select Video > My Videos. Then click on the video that needs to be captioned.

1.2 Scroll down until you see the link to Download this video on the right side of the page. Right-click on this link and choose the “Save As” option to save the file to your computer.

1.3 Log into your 3Play Media account.

1.4 Select Upload, specify the turnaround requirement, and click Start Uploading.

Watch how to upload your video files

1.5 You will receive an email alert when the captions and/or subtitles are ready for use.

Step 2 – Embed Your Video and Captions

Note: In order for the captions or subtitles to show up correctly, you need to use a JavaScript embed for your Vimeo video. Although this is not the normal way to embed Vimeo videos, it produces the same results.

2.1 From your 3Play Media account, navigate to My Files. Select the Publish tab and click the Video Plugins link beside the appropriate file.

2.2 Select the Captions Plugin tab and check the box to enable the captions plugin. Select “Vimeo” for the My Video Player setting and choose which other features you would like to enable.

Watch how to install the captions plugin

Note: To enable the SEO transcript read the section “How to Enable Video SEO” below.

2.3 Copy the embed code to the clipboard.

2.4 Paste the embed code in your web page.

2.5 Replace the {USE_YOUR_VIDEO_OBJECT_ID} with the Vimeo player ID from your video embed. This links the captions plugin with the player and allows the two to communicate.

2.6 You can further customize the captions plugin by tweaking other embed settings.

Learn more about the captions plugin

Technical documentation and examples

How to Enable Video SEO

Note: The captions plugin improves video SEO by providing a way for search engines to index the spoken content in the video. To get the SEO benefit, the transcript needs to exist in the web page source code. By enabling the SEO Transcript option, your transcript gets appended to the embed code inside <noscript> tags. Viewers will not see the transcript, but search engines will. For shorter videos, the entire transcript will be added. For longer videos, only the first section of the transcript will be added to avoid getting penalized by search engines for long load times.

1. Navigate to My Files and select the Publish tab.

2. Click the Video Plugins link beside the appropriate file and select the SEO Transcript tab.

3. Check the box Enable SEO Transcript. This will add the transcript to your embed code.

4. Proceed with steps 2.3 to 2.6 to publish your captions plugin.

How to Enable Searchable Captions and Subtitles

The captions plugin lets users search through the captions and jump to any point in the video by clicking the text. This feature is enabled by default. To disable it, set the searchbar setting to false in the embed code.

How To Add Multilingual Subtitles

After you submit a video to 3Play Media for translation, you will obtain a subtitle track for each language that you selected. To enable the captions plugin for multiple language tracks, you need to add a few lines to the embed code. Below is an example of what should be added to the embed code. See complete details and examples to customize the captions plugin.

cross_domain_loader: true,
cross_domain_dynamic_callback: true,
tracks: {        
            "English" : "http://static.3playmedia.com/files/9697/captions.srt?apikey=53UH51JZtGzBu4y3srzWSISp8g_fs95h",
            "French" :  "http://static.3playmedia.com/files/9697/translations/french.srt?apikey=53UH51JZtGzBu4y3srzWSISp8g_fs95h",
            "Spanish" : "http://static.3playmedia.com/files/9697/translations/spanish.srt?apikey=53UH51JZtGzBu4y3srzWSISp8g_fs95h"
         }

How To Edit Your Captions After They Have Been Published

Note: Your 3Play Media account includes an editor that lets you change your transcripts and captions on the fly. Any changes that you make instantly propagate to all output files, including captions that have been published through the captions plugin. This saves you from having to reprocess or republish your captions or subtitles.

Watch how to edit your captions after they have been processed

1. From your 3Play Media account select My Files and click View/Edit beside the file that needs to be edited.

2. Use the editing interface to make changes or redactions to your transcript and captions. The editing software will automatically keep track of the time synchronization. When you’re done click Save.

Captions and subtitles can be complicated to set up and unreliable. That’s because every video player has its own quirks and some players don’t even support captions or subtitles. Those that do can be fussy about the caption format and often provide limited usability options. The captions plugin solves all of these problems and makes captioning easy. It also makes your video searchable and SEO-friendly. See a demo.

• Section 508 and ADA compliant captions
• Multiple language subtitles
• Searchable and interactive
• SEO boost
• Works with the most popular video players
• On/off toggle
• Position and style can be customized
• Captions can be edited on the fly

How It Works

The captions plugin is installed by inserting an embed code on your web page. Your 3Play Media account dynamically generates the code based on your specific video player and custom settings. Once installed, the plugin will automatically communicate with your video player and you can have multiple captions plugins working with different video players on a single web page. The caption data and search are normally hosted by 3Play Media, but it’s also possible to self-host the plugin.

Watch how to install the captions plugin

See a demo and learn more

Technical documentation and examples

FAQs about the captions plugin

Searchable Captions & Subtitles

The captions plugin lets users search the captions or subtitles and navigate to any point in the video by clicking the text.

Video SEO

The captions plugin improves video SEO by providing a way for search engines to index the spoken content in the video. To get the SEO benefit, the transcript needs to exist in the web page source code. By enabling the SEO Transcript option, your transcript gets appended to the embed code inside <noscript> tags. Viewers will not see the transcript, but search engines will. For shorter videos, the entire transcript will be added. For longer videos, only the first section of the transcript will be added to avoid getting penalized by search engines for long load times.

Works With Most Video Players

The captions plugin works out of the box with many different video players, even those that don’t support captions or subtitles, like Vimeo. Supported players include Brightcove, YouTube, Kaltura, Vimeo, Ooyala, JW Player, Blip.tv, Flowplayer, and Wistia.

HTML is the markup language used to render almost every page on the web. HTML5 is the latest version, and it’s replete with incredibly useful features, including a universal video standard that lets developers add video to a web page without using any third party plugins, like Flash. The new standard also makes it much easier to publish accessible video through closed captioning.

This blog article provides an overview of how HTML5 will improve and standardize accessible video through captioning. Although HTML5 is still evolving, most browsers have already adopted the basic video features. The hope is that we will also be able to converge on a single web captioning format. Although we’re not quite there yet, this article examines the two caption formats being considered.

Why is video captioning so difficult in HTML?

In the current version of HTML, there is no standard for showing a video on a web page. Almost all videos are shown through plugins, like Flash, QuickTime, Silverlight, and RealPlayer. The problem with this approach is that there is no standardization across different browsers and devices. And although web publishers try to build redundancies and fallback provisions to maximize compatibility, it’s practically impossible to publish video that works universally. As a consequence, publishing closed captions has been difficult and unreliable because both the caption format and encoding method depend on the video publishing technology used.

How does HTML5 simplify web video and accessibility?

HTML5 is a major step forward for standardizing video across web browsers and devices, and thus simplifying closed captioning. The idea is that web video will be based on an open, universal standard that works everywhere. HTML5 natively supports video without the need for third party plugins. A video can be added to a web page using the video element, which makes it almost as simple as adding an image. The track element can then be used to display closed captions, subtitles, text video descriptions, chapter markers, or other time-aligned metadata.

The HTML code below shows how these elements work:

<video  width="320" height="240">
  <source type="video/mp4" src="my_video_file.mp4" >
  <track src="captions_file.vtt" label="English captions" kind="captions" srclang="en-us" default >
</video>

The attributes of the track element work like this:

Will HTML5 include a standard caption format?

Currently there are two competing caption formats being considered. In part, this is because there are two groups collaborating on HTML5: The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

WHATWG has developed and proposed the WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks) caption format, which is a new, user friendly text format that consists of line numbers, timelines, and text with formatting options. WebVTT is similar to the widely established SRT format, but accommodates text formatting, positioning, and rendering options (pop-up, roll-on, paint-on).

W3C has proposed using TTML (timed text markup language), which is a widely established XML format supported in Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight and used by sites like Netflix and Hulu.

To see how the two caption formats work, Microsoft built a HTML5 captioning prototype that demonstrates both formats in HTML5.

3Play Media has been participating in the development of captioning standards through the Web Media Text Tracks Community Group, which was created to advance this area of HTML5 and improve web captioning solutions.

Although the current HTML5 spec supports both caption formats, it appears that the WebVTT format is gaining ground on TTML. The hope is that we will converge on a single caption format, which would greatly simplify the process of publishing accessible video.

WebVTT caption format

The WebVTT caption format is a text file with a .vtt extension. The file begins with a header “WEBVTT FILE” followed by cues and their corresponding text. There are several parameters that allow you to control the line position, text position, and alignment. You can also add styling to the text within the cue itself. The example below demonstrates a bold <b> element. Read this blog for detailed information about WebVTT formatting.

Also, for a comprehensive look at the WebVTT caption format, watch the presentation by Silvia Pfeiffer and see her presentation slides.

WEBVTT
1
00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:016.100
<b>ARNE DUNCAN:</b> I'll start and
then turn it over to you.
2
00:00:16.100 --> 00:00:20.100
It's so critically important
that parents be actively engaged      

TTML caption format

<tt xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/ttml" xml:lang="en">
  <body>
   <div>
     <p begin="00:00:13.00" end="00:00:16.10">
       ARNE DUNCAN: I'll start and then turn it over to you.
     </p>
     <p begin="00:00:16.10" end="00:00:20.10">
       It's so critically important that parents be actively engaged
     </p>
   </div>
  </body>
 </tt>

When will the HTML5 video captioning features be ready for web-wide use?

The W3C and WHATWG have developed specifications for how video and captions should work in browsers. Although these standards are still being refined, it’s now up to the browser developers (Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and Apple) to adopt these standards and build in the functionality. That will take some time. Although there appears to be a lot of consensus around video standardization, there are still some open issues hampering universal adoption. The reality is that browser developers have their own technical, legal, and business agendas .

Although the new <video> element is already supported by most browsers, there has been no consensus on a single video format (MP4, WebM, and Ogg are being considered). Also, most of the advanced video features are not yet ready for use. Unfortunately this includes the <track> element, which is required to publish captions and subtitles.

On May 25, 2011 the W3C announced “Last Call”, which was an invitation for communities inside and outside of W3C to provide feedback on whether the HTML5 technical requirements have been satisfied. The recommended release was set for 2014 and the hope is that it will gain web-wide adoption over the subsequent few years.

Overview

3Play Media has a complete captioning integration with Echo360. You can submit closed captioning requests from within Echo360 for individual classes or an entire course. The media files get automatically transferred to 3Play Media for processing and the closed captions get posted back to your Echo360 account after they have been processed. You can monitor the status of your captioning requests from within Echo360 or your 3Play Media account. You can also obtain plain transcripts or caption files in a different format through your 3Play Media account.

Step 1 – Create a 3Play Media Account

1. Sign up for a 3Play Media account. If you have any questions, email us at sales@3playmedia.com or call (617) 764-5189.

2. Once your 3Play Media account has been activated, log in at http://account.3playmedia.com and set up your payment information at Account > Invoices.

3. Navigate to Upload > Import from Linked Accounts and select the Echo360 tab.

4. Locate your API Key and API Secret Key. You will need these in the next step.

5. Click the link to download the Echo360 Plugin.

Step 2 – Configure Your Echo360 Account

1. Unzip the Echo360 Plugin that you downloaded in the previous step and place it in the local directory /data/echo360/server/plugins/publishers/

2. Restart the server.

3. Log in to your Echo360 account.

4. Navigate to Configuration > Publishers and select Add New Publisher.

5. Fill in the fields in the Publisher Details section:

6. In the Publisher Configuraiton section, paste the 3Play Media API Key and Secret Key from your 3Play Media account (see Step 1). Click Test Settings to validate the entries. If you encounter an error, check to make sure that you copied the exact character strings without any extra spaces.

7. Click the Save button. You should see the confirmation screen below.

Step 3 –Initiate a Closed Caption Request

1. Navigate to the Echoes tab and click on the title of an echo that needs to be captioned.

2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Edit button.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Add Publisher button.

4. Select 3Play Media and click the Save button.

5. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and make sure that 3Play Media is listed in the Configured Presentation Publishers section. Click the Save button.

6. Your media file will automatically be sent to 3Play Media for processing. The caption file will automatically post back to your Echo360 account after it has been completed. Standard turnaround is 4 business days. 1-business-day rush service and 2-business-day expedited service is also available.

Until recently, churches and religious broadcasters have been exempt from closed captioning requirements that would normally apply to TV shows, recorded sermons and church services, educational videos, and other video or audio programming. Religious organizations were sheltered by a blanket FCC exemption granted in 2006 after the Anglers for Christ Ministries successfully argued that closed captioning was an undue economic hardship.

On October 20, 2011 the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau overturned that decision, requiring religious organizations to comply with the same accessibility laws as other media publishers. Churches can still individually apply for an exemption if they can prove that they can’t afford closed captioning.

The Bureau’s rescindment was instigated by a coalition of advocacy groups for the deaf and hard of hearing. The coalition argued that the order “improperly and unilaterally established a new class of exempt programming.”

While advocates for the deaf are pleased that more programming will become accessible, some religious broadcasters are concerned that this move could shut down some programming because of the additional costs involved with captioning.

Overview

This blog article provides step by step instructions on how to create a Flash video file with closed captions or subtitles using Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5. For additional information, see Adobe’s resources on captioning video in Adobe Flash CS5.5. Also, see Adobe’s resources for captioning in Flash CS4 and Flash CS3.

Step 1 – Submit Your Video File for Captioning

1. Log into your 3Play Media account.

2. Select Upload and specify the turnaround requirements.

3. You will receive an email alert when the captions file is ready for use.

Step 2 – Download Your Captions File

1. From your 3Play Media account, navigate to My Files. Click the download link beside the appropriate file and select DFXP.

2. Unzip the file after it downloads and copy it to the same location as your video file.

Step 3 – Add Closed Captions or Subtitles Using Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5

1. Open a new document and choose the ActionScript 3.0 document choice in the Start panel.

2. Import your video by selecting File > Import > Import Video. If your video is not already in a Flash FLV or F4V format, you will need to convert it using Adobe Media Encoder or another file converter.

3. Select a skin that supports captions (you can change the skin at a later time by selecting the FLVPlayback component on the stage and editing the skin property).

4. Wait for the video import to complete.

5. If necessary, resize the player by selecting Modify > Transform so that it fits in the white workspace.

6. Select Windows > Components and double-click the FLVPlaybackCaptioning component.

7. Select the FLVPlaybackCaptioning component and in the Component Parameters section, set showCaptions to true and enter the name and location of the caption file in the source field (if you placed it in the same directory as the media file, then just enter the filename).

For additional information, see Adobe’s resources to customize the FLVPlaybackCaptioning component.

8. To test the captions, select Control > Test Movie > Test.

9. To publish the captioned video, select File > Publish.

How to Adjust the Position of the Caption Area

You can customize the size and position of the caption area by creating a text box that links to the FVLPlaybackCaptioning component.

1. Select Windows > Components > User Interface and double-click on TextArea to add it to the stage.

2. Size and position the text box, making sure that there is sufficient height to display 2 lines of text.

3. In the properties, change the name to “CaptionArea”.

4. Select the FLVPlaybackCaption component and change the captionTargetName field to “CaptionArea”. Also uncheck the autoLayout field.

5. Test your changes by selecting Control > Test Movie > Test.

ESPN recently gave a sneak peak into their Program Compliance team that oversees closed captioning for ESPN programming across their many affiliates.  They even talk through the process of how the content reaches a remote stenographer and how the captions are then sent back to ESPN and embedded into their broadcast feed. Sports content is actually some of the most difficult to caption in general because games are fast-paced, there is specialized vocabulary, and the rosters are full of unique player names.  Add the live component and you can quickly see that this is quite an operation.

ESPN points out that there are many benefits to closed captioning in addition to serving the hearing impaired. Captions also allow viewers at gyms, bars, airports, and offices to follow along without the sound. Non-native English speakers also benefit from captions because it is easier to read the text than to follow what is being spoken.  Web captions are even more powerful than television captions since search and SEO are additional benefits for web-based content.

Take a look at how ESPN manages hundreds of daily events in need of captioning: